Individual action locks failing within Automation Plan

Usage and Config Server Automation
1

I created a Fixlet which is having an action lock to be triggered ONLY between 1:30 - 1:40 AM Client local Time. The Fixlet works perfectly fine individually but when I am using the Fixlet within the automation plan, it runs without considering the action locks.
Questions: [BigFix Server version: 9.5.3.211]

  1. Is BigFix Automation Plan designed in such a way by default that it will not consider the individual action locks? Can it be enhanced?
  2. I may be able to use the below logic in action script but cannot work out the correct syntax.
    action lock until <expire date> <effective date>.
    How can I specify the time range (1:30 - 1:40 AM) in the above syntax.?

(The patching in my environment completes around 12AM so I am targeting the restart between this interval)

2

I take it you are using Server Automation?

I’m not certain what exactly you mean when you say “action lock” but if you have an individual item that you have action locks in with how it should be deployed when you take action, that does not have an effect when an individual item is within a baseline because that baseline has a single set of action criteria for all of the individual components even though each individual source for those components may have their own action criteria specified using action locks.

I am not familiar enough with Server Automation and Automation plans to understand how it affects action criteria / action locks, but my blind guess is that this is a related issue.

You could specify the times that the item can run using regular relevance instead of action criteria, but that has other considerations to make it work well.

Why is what you are doing need to run in such a narrow window? Are you just trying to schedule the restart? Or is it something more complicated?

3

Thanks for the response.

Yes, I am just trying to schedule a restart but from a step within the Automation Plan.
We are looking forward to a full end to end automation, so as to have no manual intervention in between, hence using the automation plan and not targeting individual fixlets.

When we create a fixlet/Task, we get an option to setup action setting lock but yes as you mentioned that for a baseline individual settings does not work because it is a single set of action criteria.

Can we use the regular relevance to give a specific time range rather than a date range? If possible, can you please assist with a sample relevance for the same.